


Hold This Heart, a Present in Your Palm

by xbedhead



Category: Justified
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-14
Updated: 2012-07-14
Packaged: 2017-11-09 22:12:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/459028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xbedhead/pseuds/xbedhead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>And it suddenly occurs to him that she knows nothing about him, that he’s made every effort to keep parts of his life hidden from her, held them fiercely to his side, as if letting them out could make them happen all over again.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold This Heart, a Present in Your Palm

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [](http://hc-bingo.livejournal.com/profile)[**hc_bingo**](http://hc-bingo.livejournal.com/) prompt: _Abandonment Issues_. This is unbeta'd and has been sitting on my shelf for months. Glad to dust it off and be able to finish it toward something like the fic challenge. Feedback is appreciated, but not necessary.

~*~

“No. _Damnit!_ ”

He’s half-awake, memories trickling out because his filters are working overtime on the stab-sharp pain in his side and sack of cotton he has stuffed in his skull.

“Raylan?”

“ _Loretta_? Where is she?”

He opens his eyes all the way, taking in the whiteboard on the wall in front of the bed, blurry but bold in black - _Input: 400ml – Output: 145ml; 2.5mg Percocet, 17:00; Ibuprofen p.r.n._. Might as well be Chinese.

He makes a noise that could be considered a question, but the thought of moving his head, or shifting his eyes again is enough to make his lids snap shut. He feels something soft and his hand shifts, making room for Winona’s thinner fingers to weave between his. The thought that he wishes they had cut his left arm off at the shoulder flits through his mind, unfinished.

Winona hasn’t said anything and the white noise in the room is loud enough to drown out a bulldozer.

And then everything comes back – their conversation at Loretta’s home and subsequent argument on the drive to the courthouse, arriving at Wade Messer’s place and then the world was upside down and he was praying that Slugger wouldn’t connect with his head; Dickie Bennett’s incessant talk on the way to Mags’ house and the white hot slide of the bullet through his side.

“Time is it?” he slurs and somewhere overhead a light goes on, causing him to squint.

He hears a long, wet sniff and feels a stab of guilt to go along with the physical pain.

“Umm...it’s uh...about 10:30 at night. Do you need anything?” she asks quickly and even though his eyes are still closed, it’s obvious by her voice that she’s straightening, pulling herself together from whatever chasm of worry she’d fallen into. “Water, some pain medicine? I don’t know if you can eat yet.”

“I’m okay,” he whispers, doing his best - and failing - to keep in a moan of discomfort.

“Let me go get the nurse,” she says.

He opens his eyes at that and keeps a hold on her hand, still warm and entwined in his. “No. Stay.”

She looks at him for a moment - her irises terribly blue against the red rims of her eyelids - and there’s something there...something he isn’t quite seeing, reading. And then she turns away, shoulders slumping as her breath escapes her lungs.

He lets go of her hand, acutely aware of how cold his own is now, and turns his gaze to the ceiling.

“I”m sorry,” he says, his voice hoarse as he tries to bolster it with a strength he doesn’t feel at the moment.

“ _Why_ did you go? Can you answer me that? _Please_?” She’s leaning forward now, elbows on her knees, one palm pressed flat against the other – like she’s praying. Maybe she is. “I’m not – I’m not judging you, I’m not angry, I just…I _need_ to know what you thought was so important that you had to risk your life when it could’ve just as easily been someone else.”

Maybe it’s the Percocet, or the fact that he can practically taste sleep on the back of his tongue. But his eyes land on Winona, lids fluttering briefly as he draws in a slow, deep breath. “‘Cause she didn’t have anybody else.”

“She _did_ ,” Winona argues gently. “You-you could’ve asked Tim or Rachel. I bet Art would’ve -”

“She was alone, Winona,” he cuts in, like that explains everything. “They don’t... _you_ don’t know what it’s like not to...to have anything, any _one_ who’ll stand up for you. I _had_ t’go.”

Winona is silent, but he knows she’s digesting what he’s said, what he’s told her and what he hasn’t. And it suddenly occurs to him that she knows nothing about him, that he’s made every effort to keep parts of his life hidden from her, held them fiercely to his side, as if letting them out could make them happen all over again. They’re about to have a child and laying here in this hospital bed, he can’t fathom the slightest idea why he’d done that.

He’s not a stranger, but she doesn’t really know him.

“‘He’s very sweet’ - tha’s what you said about him, day we buried Helen.”

He doesn’t know what he’s saying. He’s in that gray space between sleep and wakefulness and words are pouring out of his mouth, sand through a cargo net, holding nothing back.

“Put my mother in the hospital ‘leven times - broke her arm, her ribs, cheekbone twice. Her nose was crooked by th’time I’s in fourth grade - broke that, too.”

He swallows the sour taste in the back of his throat and half-wonders if he should’ve taken Winona up on the offer for some water. He’s not sure he can lift his hand, his head to drink it, though. Everything is heavy, like there’s a force pushing him beneath a blanket, warm and inviting with the promise of a blessed emptiness.

“Helen...she saved me. Took me when she could, taught me to keep my head down, how t’read Arlo an’ ‘is moods.”

He laughs a little, thinking of how he’d turned it into a game when he was about twelve - observing his father for signs of eruption. It was something he’d always done, albeit unconsciously, and he supposed he could, in a round about way, thank Arlo for that skill. It’d served him well with the Marshals.

“You know she bought me my first razor?” he asks, turning to face her.

She has tears in her eyes now - real ones, not their shadows - and it confuses him for the two and a half seconds he allows himself to think about it. But then she’s shaking her head and he’s saying, “She’s gone - body’s startin’ t’rot by now, I’m sure.”

“Raylan...”

Her voice sounds so far away.

“I can never be her,” he says tiredly, resigned to the truth he’s just discovered. “She’s more’n any of us.”

And he’s been waiting for this feeling to return, this peace when he slides off into the white world behind his eyelids. He’s safe, loved or unloved, it doesn’t matter.

And nothing can touch him.


End file.
